Israel is “completely unprepared” to cope with the consequences of a war, a lawmaker in charge of home front preparations has told AFP, as tensions rise over a possible confrontation with Iran.
Zeev Bielsky, who heads the parliamentary committee for home front preparedness, accused the Israeli government of “wanton disregard,” saying the country faced a dire shortage of both gas masks and bomb shelters. “Today, only 60 percent of Israelis — 4.5 to 5 million people — have gas masks,” he said, adding that some 400,000 households in Israel do not have access to a bomb shelter. “There are currently 1.7 million citizens without any protection from bombs, or shelters,” he said. “We must be prepared at any moment for any possible scenario, and today we are completely unprepared.” Bielsky, a lawmaker from the centre-right opposition party Kadima, said the gas mask shortage was the result of the government’s failure to allocate sufficient funds to the two Israeli factories that produce the masks. With the current state of turmoil in the region, “and especially in light of the condition in Syria, it is wanton disregard that the government is not providing this basic product, which every citizen should have,” he said. In January, Israel’s air force chief — then head of the military’s planning division — warned that Syria possessed “huge stockpiles of chemicals, biologicals (weapons), strategic capabilities that are still going into Syria.”
The future of those weapons is uncertain, if President Bashar al-Assad’s embattled regime is toppled, Major-General Amir Eshel said. “That’s a major concern, because I don’t know who is going to own those the day after.” A spokeswoman for the Israel Postal Company, which is responsible for distributing masks to Israelis, told AFP earlier this week that they had distributed some four million gas masks, and had less than 100,000 left. “This is all we have. It is not enough for all Israeli citizens. When we have more, we’ll distribute more,” said Merav Lapidot, admitting she had no indication if and when they would receive additional masks. Bielsky warned it would take Israel at least two years to solve the current shortage, assuming the factories received the necessary funds, estimated at 1.4 billion shekels ($343 million, 260 million euros). A spokesman for Israel’s home front defence minister Matan Vilnai pointed the finger at the finance ministry. The minister “alerted the government on the issue in numerous cabinet meetings, and in addition asked the prime minister and finance ministry to allocate additional funds to produce more gas masks for the entire population,” he said in a statement.
“All of the minister’s requests were turned down by the finance ministry due to budgetary considerations.” The finance ministry rejected those claims, saying it “had not received similar claims from the relevant personnel in the defence ministry — the body in charge of funding the home front — regarding missing funds.” The Israeli government came under pressure last year to cut its defence budget to help fund social spending, but in January Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced an increase in military spending, citing the regional developments. In recent months, Israel has watched with concern as violence has spiralled in neighbouring Syria, and has repeatedly warned that it will not tolerate a nuclear Iran, prompting rising speculation about whether it plans to attack the Islamic republic’s nuclear facilities.
